A public defender claims former Alameda County DA Pamela Price tried to shake her down for political donations in exchange for a lighter sentence for her client, and that public defender just won a subpoena to go through Price’s phone records to prove it.
You would think that former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price would no longer be in the news, as she was recalled this past November, and her final day in office was a week ago. Yet back in the news Price is, for reasons she will surely not welcome.
In the final month of the recall campaign, one minor figure in the whole Sheng Thao FBI raid drama, who happened to be facing criminal charges, claimed that Price tried to shake him down for a $25,000 anti-recall donation in exchange for going easy on his prosecution. Just over a month later, an Alameda County public defender said Price also tried to shake her down for an anti-recall donation in exchange for lighter sentencing for her client, who’d been found guilty of murder.
And now the Bay Area News Group reports that public defender has won a subpoena of Price’s phone records in order to prove her claim. Per the News Group, the subpoena was requested in a court hearing last Friday, and “Judge Thomas Reardon indicated he would grant the subpoena and expects it be complied with by the year’s end.”
The murder case in question is the 2020 murder of an Oakland investment banker, for which 47-year-old Jamal Thomas was found guilty in July. Thomas’s attorney was Alameda County deputy public defender Jennie Otis. Otis has said in a sworn affidavit that Price called her to ask about a political donation to fight the recall, and then just casually mentioned that Thomas could be sentenced to an extra ten years in prison with enhancements Price was in a position to add.
That’s unusual, because Price was notorious for never adding enhancements on to sentences.
Yes, Pamela Price’s phone records can be subpoenaed, because by law, written communications by elected officials are supposed to be made public on request. This request is for emails and phone records. Price will have to comply with the subpoena by December 30.
The subpoena is for communications between June 20-24, which is when the public defender Otis says the conversation happened. The subpoena also requests communications between November 20 and December 5, for reasons that are not explained. But just spitballing here, November 20 was when Otis went public with her accusation, and December 5 was Price’s final day in office.
Image: Pamela Y. Price via Facebook
